ROZENSTRAAT –

Events

Join us for an evening with Jeffrey Babcock where we shall explore a series of underground, almost forgotten films, that explore the themes of self autonomy that align with the motif of Grace’s exhibition.

THE OTHER SIDE OF THE UNDERNEATH 1972

Directed by Jane Arden
106 minutes
In English

Why is this film so unknown and neglected? Is it because of its controversial theme of anti-psychiatry, or its cutting-edge experimental film style, or because it’s directed by a woman? Probably a combination of all three, but one thing that’s for sure is male filmmakers are permitted to break the rules (like Jodorowsky, or Lynch) in ways that women are not. Instead of being praised as visionaries, women are more likely to be exorcised from the scene for their transgressions. Like the avant-garde films of Maya Deren, Arden refuses to imitate male cinema, and throws herself into the struggle of finding a new cinematic language. Society has a nasty way of editing out anything it doesn’t want to face, and female desire is one of those contradictions. In fact, after this movie was made it was quickly sent into oblivion, and was impossible to see for twenty-five years.

Director Jane Arden had participated in the anti-psychiatry wave of the 1970s that questioned whether ‘madness’ can be understood from a straight rational scientific perspective. So instead Arden throws us into a dreamworld… an expressionist, experimental approach based on raw emotional experience. It starts with a woman being pulled from a river and taken to an institution where she is treated for schizophrenia. The film gives us no safe distance from her crisis, and soon we find ourselves plunged into a hallucinatory psych-drama, flickering with smouldering images, both poetic and searing. As we plunge into the shattered psyche of this woman, instead of finding an illness deep within those cold waters, we find the fears, repressions, scars and taboos of a fucked-up society.

Jane Arden created this movie together with an all-female theatre collective called Holocaust (of which Arden was a member). The film is a real ‘journey to the end of the night’ and is set to an amazing soundtrack composed by unknown female cellist Sally Minford. A fierce critique of the power relation between patients and doctors, pumped full of crazy spellbinding imagery.

On Sunday July 28 from 1 pm, Marion van Wijk and Koos Dalstra will host an afternoon around the life and practice of Bas Jan Ader. They will talk about their research, will show some rarly shown video’s and get more in detail about Ader’s stay in Amsterdam in the summer of 1971. Afterwards there will be a screening of ‘Here is Always Somewhere Else (2007) a documentary about Bas Jan Ader by René Daalder.

About the speakers:
For the last 25 years Marion van Wijk and Koos Dalstra have been working on a broad research around Bas Jan Ader for which they talked with the artist’s family, friends and collegues. They also spoke to curators, art historians and other persons who played an important role in Ader’s life. vW&D published several books around the life and practice of one of most well known Dutch artists, most recently Bas Jan Ader: Discovery File 143/76 (2017)

Funny fact: for more as 35 years Marion lived few houses from where is now our space, so most of vW&D’s research actually took it’s start at our beloved street.

Join us for an afternoon performance of Remembered Positions (2019). The work considers conversations between the artist, during childhood, and her grandfather.

This performance-installation consists of a series of positions that the performer takes, each one representing a memory of a position in a story that Schwindt’s grandfather told her about the boxing matches he took as a prisoner of war in Tunisia during the Second World War. In addition to these memories he also spoke about his experience as a soldier, focusing on the soldier’s body from different perspectives and experiences.

The personal talks between grandfather and granddaughter are layered with ongoing conversations between Schwindt and different dancers about their experience of wounds and caring for their body in order to perform, all together forming the core of the artist’s latest piece which will premiere at the opening and that will be performed several more times for the duration of the exhibition.

Is there still room for the crazy people? For the outsiders, the free riders, the people who deviate from the norm and even for the middle class? On the occasion of Marian Donner’s recent publication Zelfverwoestingsboek (Self Destruction Book) the ROZENSTRAAT organises together with Das Mag Publishers and the author herself an evening on the gentrification of Amsterdam. This evening we want to focus on the fringes of our city. Via an open stage we want to discuss where can you still find freedom and, above all: how can that freedom be increased? So that the wildness of Amsterdam that makes the city so special won’t get lost and all those crazy people, outsiders and freebooters and yes, even the normals, can be heard. It must above all be an evening where we all celebrate the wildness of Amsterdam!

Join us for an evening with Jeffrey Babcock where we shall explore a series of underground, almost forgotten films, that explore the themes of self autonomy that align with the motif of Grace’s exhibition.

FREAKSTARS 3000 2004

Directed by Christoph Schlingensief

75 minutes – In German with English subtitles

One of the enfant terribles of the German cultural scene was the wild and prolific artist Christoph Schlingensief. He has sadly died, but before he passed away he was a crucial antidote to the Rigor mortis that was settling into the commercial art scene. He broke ground in both the theatre and cinema with his crazy, blistering, breathtaking projects. This movie certainly ranks among his very best.

This bizarre flick is an astounding example of Schlingensief’s ability to absorb mainstream culture and take all the air out of it at the same time. In this case he tackles Reality TV talent shows, but he also takes punches at our society’s view of the ‘handicapped’ or disabled. This is the kind of performance-film that will knock you out cold, and it is meant to be uncomfortable. In the end, it is about the absurdity of the modern world, something we often forget because we are stuck in the middle of it… sometimes we need a swift kick from someone like Schlingensief so we can see it from the outside. Mind-blowing.

+ Short film before the feature: PSYCHIATRY AND VIOLENCE 1971

Directed by Peter Robinson.

In this short straight-forward documentary clip, R.D. Laing draws a parallel between modern psychiatry and the Inquisition’s persecution of witches (women).